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Congressional Record
April 29, 2003HONORING JOHN HARDTSenator Robert Bennett (R-Utah)
Chairman, Joint Economic Committee
[DJ: John Hardt can be reached at jhardt@crs.loc.gov]

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I take this opportunity today to pay tribute to a
very distinguished servant of the legislative branch of the Congress. In May
2003, Dr. John Hardt will end his official service with the Congressional
Research service after 32 years as a valuable resource to Congress in the field
of international economics and foreign affairs. In many ways, Dr. Hardt's
retirement symbolizes the ending of an era for the Congress; he is the only
remaining CRS Senior Specialist now providing Congress with research and
analysis in the field of foreign affairs. He has been a great asset to the
Congress and to CRS throughout his long career in public service.

Dr. Hardt received both his Ph.D. in economics and a Certificate from the
Russian institute from Columbia University. Prior to joining the Congressional
Research Service, he had already had the kind of illustrious career that serves
as a lifetime achievement for many others. He served his country with
distinction during World War II, receiving ribbons and battle stars for both the
European and Asiatic Theaters of Operations as well as the Philippine Liberation
Ribbon. He has been an educator--specializing in economics, Soviet studies, and
Sino-Soviet studies--at the University of Washington, the University of
Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, the George Washington University, the
Foreign Service Institute, and American military service schools. He has served
in the American private sector, specializing in Soviet electric power and
nuclear energy economics for the CEIR Corporation in Washington, DC, and as a
director of the Strategic Studies Department at the Research Analysis
Corporation in McLean, VA, where he specialized in Soviet Comparative Communist
and Japanese Studies. He is a widely published author, with hundreds of research
papers, journal articles, technical memoranda, and books and book chapters to
his credit.

Dr. Hardt joined the Congressional Research Service as the Senior Specialist
in Soviet Economics in November of 1971. It is his work for CRS--and for us, the
Members of this body--that I want to honor today. For the past three decades,
Dr. Hardt has served Members of Congress, their staffs, and committees with his
considerable expertise in Soviet and post-Soviet and Eastern Europe economics,
the economy of the People's Republic of China, East-West commercial relations,
and comparative international economic analysis. He has advised, among others,
both the Senate and House Commerce Committees on East-West trade; the senate and
House Banking Committees on the Export-Import Bank and other U.S. government
financing programs; and the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees
on U.S. trade policy. He frequently has traveled with congressional committee
delegations, serving as a technical adviser on visits to the former Soviet
Union, Poland, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom, the Federal
Republic of Germany, Italy, and Sweden, and then preparing committee reports for
these trips. On many occasions, Dr. Hardt has been called on to advise directly
Members of Congress and congressional staff on Russian Federation debt reduction
and its relationship to nonproliferation concerns, and has provided support to
the Russian Leadership Program, especially those events and activities that
involved Members of Congress. The extent of his national and international
contacts is breathtaking and includes senior members of foreign governments and
leading multinational businesses.

His most lasting legacy for Congress may well be his service as both editor
and coordinator of a long series of Joint Economic Committee compendia on the
economies of the PRC, Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. The Congress can take
pride in these important, well-known, and highly respected JEC studies, to which
Dr. Hardt devoted so much of his talent and energies. The more than 70 volumes
of this work include: China Under the Four Modernizations, 1982; China's Economy
Looks Toward the Year 2000, 1986; The Former Soviet Union in Transition, 1993;
East-Central European Economies in Transition, 1994; and Russia's Uncertain
Economic Future, 2001. The series includes hundreds of analytical papers on
various aspects of issues pertinent to Congress and to U.S. policy, all written
by internationally recognized government, academic, and Private sector experts,
and all coordinated and edited by Dr. Hardt . This work was not only a valuable
source of analysis to the Congress but also to the policymaking and academic
communities at large. For many years, these volumes were the most comprehensive
sources of economic data and analyses on the economies of the Soviet Union,
China, and Easter Europe.

Let me make one final point to illustrate the loss that we, as Members of
Congress, will sustain with Dr. Hardt's retirement. That point concerns one of
the great strengths that CRS offers to Congress, and which Dr. Hardt's tenure
and contributions at CRS epitomize perfectly: institutional memory. Of the 525
Members of the 108th Congress, only 11 were Members of the 92nd Congress when
Dr. Hardt first assumed his official congressional duties. Most of the countries
that he has specialized in have undergone astounding transformation during his
working life--some, indeed, no longer exist. The members of this deliberative
body in which we serve has turned over many times. Committees have come and
gone. But through it all, John Hardt has been a constant fixture, a strand of
continuity in an environment of continual change--part of the collective
institutional memory of CRS which is of such value to our work in Congress. We
wish Dr. Hardt well in the new ventures on which he will be embarking. He will
be greatly missed by us all.